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In the preceding chapters, I discussed the sense in which phenomena as diverse as self-temporalization, association, memory and language can be regarded as passive. Time-consciousness is the product of an affection of the self by the self and its passive character comes from the reliance on the pre-reflective non-thematic awareness of this self-affection. Original associations organize passively pre-given affective allures into hyletic configurations on the basis of laws of similarity and contrast. Memory provides a space where non-effective or sedimented egoic achievements remain at the ego's disposal despite being open to irreversible alterations. Habitus and language bring out the intersubjective aspects of passive sedimentations. As attribute of original associations, passivity means receptivity. As attribute of memory and habitus, passivity means latent availability of sedimented contents. But the phenomena of self-temporalization, association, memory, habitus and language qualify as passive in the sense that they put to work mechanisms allowing alterity to infiltrate ownness. True, time-consciousnesses is a sort of self-affection, but the latter would be impossible if it were not accompanied by hetero-affection. Through original associations, the ego responds or reacts to the affective pull of what is non-egoic or foreign to the ego. By inserting chunks of past experience into the present life of the ego, memory fractures the ego's ownness and forces upon it a confrontation with an immanent otherness. In this chapter, I develop the claim that the systematic role of passivity is to negotiate the relation between ownness and alterity.¹ In this chapter, I consider three Husserlian accounts of alterity. First, I take up the issue of bodily self-alterity. Next, I look at the concept of empathy and explain the grounding of Husserl's social ontology in the analysis of Leiblichkeit. Finally, I dwell on the broadest sense of Fremderfahrung as interaction between one's own and alien cultures.

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3915-6_5

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